Is the fact that religion pops up in every form of civilization...

MickFleetwood

An interesting point on the social psychology of humanity in general?

Discuss.

Turtwig

Is this someone's homework or college assignment?
Please share your opinion with us too.

In brief,
Yep it is, we like to have explanations for everything even if they are only baseless superstitions.

MickFleetwood

Jernal wrote: »

Is this someone's homework or college assignment?
Please share your opinion with us too.

In brief,
Yep it is, we like to have explanations for everything even if they are only baseless superstitions.

Neither, just my own observations. :P Apologies for the lazy OP.

Basically, I think human nature has an inherent need for something to live for, some kind of goal that we all strive to achieve. Such as reaching Heaven or whatever fantastical place your religion outlines.

Humans in general also need something to believe in, I guess. Most cannot face up to the fact that they've likely only got one shot at life.

DublinArnie

I think religion is what makes socity work. Majority of people would feel "empty" at some point of their lives, especially in rural areas in my opinion. These people would sometimes turn to religion if they can't turn to other things like familiy or self-fullfilling needs. Without religion, these people would still feel empty and maybe useless, leading to more suicides. Then, thanks to the suicides and deaths, the media portrays religion as a evil thing we have on earth. I think that's interesting, religion would have been more involved in socity years ago, as the media gets louder, religion gets smaller. Religion is something everyone can take part in, so it's vital, for the poor, for the wealthy, for the needy, heck, even for the young, even they start to question and learn a little about any religion.

It's mad as everyone knows what a "god" is because we're all taught at such a young age, like we're brainwashed into believing a God. I think people were brainwashed into believeing it, as socity progresses and parents stop touching religion, less people would be brainwashed at a young age.

Religion is something we use and accept, not something we are born with obviously. Very interesting in my opinion, i'm a humanist btw, so don't critise!

MagicMarker

DublinArnie wrote: »

I think religion is what makes socity work.

Where society works it does so in spite of religion, not because of it.

Sulla Felix

MickFleetwood wrote: »

An interesting point on the social psychology of humanity in general?

Discuss.

Only insofar as lots of other things, positive and negative, also pop up in every form of civilization.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

MickFleetwood wrote: »

An interesting point on the social psychology of humanity in general?

Discuss.

I agree it's something that needs to be accounted for, without feeling that we've an axe to grind. If religious practice is a normal human feature, then it's a normal human feature.

I think "The Golden Bough" is a good place to start exploring it. I know many serious scholars would feel the approach is out of date. But you can't fault the sheer amount of work that went into it, and I feel the way he draws out the common strands in so many religious myths is illuminating.

It's hard work to read through it, but worth the effort.

HansHolzel

Myth is a word commonly and superficially used to mean a false belief. Anthropology in contrast defines myths as sacred tales.

Myths symbolize our progression through life.

Thomas Luckmann's 1960s book The Invisible Religion detailed how belief in the supernatural had been replaced for many in the West by belief in social mobility, sexual expression and the nuclear family i.e. having it all, during our only time alive.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

HansHolzel wrote: »

Myth is a word commonly and superficially used to mean a false belief. Anthropology in contrast defines myths as sacred tales.

Myths symbolize our progression through life.

I'd suggest there's a case to be made that no-one can actually accumulate enough knowledge independently to function in life. Inevitably, we've to choose one or other model without knowing if it will be effective.

All really want to know is how Hollister get away with it. How do you align a product with people's aspirations to such an extent that they throw their mone at you?

Sin City

Brian Shanahan

MickFleetwood wrote: »

An interesting point on the social psychology of humanity in general?

Discuss.

At a certain stage in a civilisation's development "goddidit" is the best explanation for unusual or major phenomena which happen to that civilisation.

That doesn't detract from how bad an answer it is, but we have to accept that a few thousand years ago when life was "nasty, brutish and short", people didn't have time to think through the likes of "how and why does thunder happen?", or "why did Urg die last night?"

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

At a certain stage in a civilisation's development "goddidit" is the best explanation for unusual or major phenomena which happen to that civilisation.

That doesn't detract from how bad an answer it is, but we have to accept that a few thousand years ago when life was "nasty, brutish and short", people didn't have time to think through the likes of "how and why does thunder happen?", or "why did Urg die last night?"

That's grand, and only needs to be tempered by realism about the extent to which we understand anything now. Inevitably, this has been said better by someone else.

“"He who investigates the history of institutions, should constantly bear in mind the extreme complexity of the causes which have built up the fabric of human society, and should be on his guard against a subtle danger incidental to all science — the tendency to simplify unduly the infinite variety of the phenomena by fixing our attention on a few of them to the exclusion of the rest. The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect o£ a number of particulars that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it (partially) we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities, and when we have done so to the utmost of our power we must still remember that from the very nature of thing's our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality.

― James George Frazer, The Golden Bough. A Study In Magic And Religion: Part 1. The Magic Art And The Evolution Of Kings. Volume 1

In other words, if it looks like I've seen further it's because you haven't noticed that we're standing on the shoulders of pygmies.

Karl Stein

MickFleetwood wrote: »

Is the fact that religion pops up in every form of civilization...

Source FFS?

MickFleetwood

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

Source FFS?

Source for what? Religion pops up in many different civilizations, don't get smarmy.

Karl Stein

MickFleetwood wrote: »

Religion pops up in many different civilizations

Many? You said:

religion pops up in every form of civilization

Every or many?

Where are you getting your information from? I'm interested if it's true or not.

MickFleetwood

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

Many? You said:



Every or many?

Where are you getting your information from?

It was a generalization. You fully understood the gist of what I was saying.

StickyIcky

OP
Why do my ankles sometimes get itchy?
Discuss

Hate threads that start this why

Why do people bother responding

MickFleetwood

StickyIcky wrote: »

OP
Why do my ankles sometimes get itchy?
Discuss

Hate threads that start this why

Why do people bother responding

Dunno. You'll have to ask yourself that.

Karl Stein

MickFleetwood wrote: »

It was a generalization. You fully understood the gist of what I was saying.

I did? Have all civilisations had a form of religion?

I have vague memories of listening to a Newstalk interview with this guy who went out to some tribe in a jungle to teach them about Christ and them saying 'sorry mate, where is this dude? Make him do something to prove he's about the gaff or we're really not interested in your fantasies'. (paraphrasing)

The sophisticated evangelist came away from his experience of 'the savages' as an atheist.

MickFleetwood

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

I did? Have all civilisations had a form of religion?

I have vague memories of listening to a Newstalk interview with this guy who went out to some tribe in a jungle to teach them about Christ and them saying 'sorry mate, where is this dude? Make him do something to prove he's about the gaff or we're really not interested in your fantasies'. (paraphrasing)

The sophisticated evangelist came away from his experience of 'the savages' as an atheist.

I don't know, I haven't looked into every single tribe and encampment in the history of recorded humanity.

Again, it was a generalization.

Karl Stein

MickFleetwood wrote: »

I don't know, I haven't looked into every single tribe and encampment in the history of recorded humanity.

Again, it was a generalization.

Well then wouldn't it be more interesting to consider civilisations that don't have religion (if there are some) instead of trying to start a thread on a generalization that all civilisations do?

MickFleetwood

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

Well then wouldn't it be more interesting to consider civilisations that don't have religion (if there are some) instead of trying to start a thread on a generalization that all civilisations do?

Dunno, maybe it would be. I just had an interesting thought process one day and decided to make a thread.

MrPudding

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

I did? Have all civilisations had a form of religion?

I have vague memories of listening to a Newstalk interview with this guy who went out to some tribe in a jungle to teach them about Christ and them saying 'sorry mate, where is this dude? Make him do something to prove he's about the gaff or we're really not interested in your fantasies'. (paraphrasing)

The sophisticated evangelist came away from his experience of 'the savages' as an atheist.

I think Robin posted something about these guys a while back. I think the basic idea was they had no conception of the third (or perhaps forth) person, or something. So when the evangelist said "Jesus died for our sins" their response was basically pics or GTFO. If you did not know the person directly, or directly know a person that did, then they weren't interested.

MrP

goose2005

One advantage is that it allows a sense of common identity for a society, because one based on immediate relations or even more distant relations can only form groups of a few hundred. Religious beliefs help to weld together larger numbers

Cathal Cloch wrote: »

I did? Have all civilisations had a form of religion?

I have vague memories of listening to a Newstalk interview with this guy who went out to some tribe in a jungle to teach them about Christ and them saying 'sorry mate, where is this dude? Make him do something to prove he's about the gaff or we're really not interested in your fantasies'. (paraphrasing)

The sophisticated evangelist came away from his experience of 'the savages' as an atheist.

That's the Piraha.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

goose2005 wrote: »

That's the Piraha.

Interesting. I hadn't heard of them. Inevitably, it's not as clear cut as it seems. According to the Encyclopedia of the Unconscious Global Mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people

According to Everett, the Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god,[11] and they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him. They require evidence based on personal experience for every claim made. [5] However, they do believe in spirits that can sometimes take on the shape of things in the environment. These spirits can be jaguars, trees, or other visible, tangible things including people.[12] Everett reported one incident where the Pirahã said that “Xigagaí, one of the beings that lives above the clouds, was standing on a beach yelling at us, telling us that he would kill us if we go into the jungle.” Everett and his daughter could see nothing and yet the Pirahã insisted that Xigagaí was still on the beach.[13]

On Everett himself

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everett

Influenced by the Pirahã's concept of truth, his belief in Christianity slowly diminished and he became an atheist. He says that he was having serious doubts by 1982, and had lost all faith by 1985. He would not tell anyone about his atheism until the late 90s;[9] when he finally did, his marriage ended in divorce and two of his three children broke off all contact. However, by 2008 full contact and relations have been restored with his children, who now seem to accept his viewpoint on theism.[10]

There's probably another thread in that. Something like "Is maintaining the integrity of your family unit worth a Mass"?

MrPudding

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

There's probably another thread in that. Something like "Is maintaining the integrity of your family unit worth a Mass"?

Yes, cos living a lie always works out really well for all concerned.

MrP

GCU Flexible Demeanour

MrPudding wrote: »

Yes, cos living a lie always works out really well for all concerned.

MrP

If only it was so straightforward.

Karl Stein

MrPudding wrote: »

their response was basically pics or GTFO

Terrlock

Religion comes from man, a set of rules that he believes that he should live by.

Some religions are man's attempt to live by God's standards but they throw in there own extra's where it's convenient.

Other religions stem from Satan or the Fallen angles of Old, the ones that came down and had sex with human women and breed the nephilim.

They were like God's to man as they were so powerful.

Jesus Christ was the most anti religious man on the planet.

Another question could be, what has religion got to do with God?

nozzferrahhtoo

MickFleetwood wrote: »

An interesting point on the social psychology of humanity in general?

Discuss.

Only is so far as the fact that the common cold has popped up in every civilization is also an interesting point on biology of humanity in general.

The point being that infections have co-evolved with us and use facts about our biology in order to perpetuate themselves. Things that have evolved for other good reasons have also left us prone to infections.

Similarly our minds and society have evolved in ways that have left us prone to memetic infection from some really unsubstantiated ideas. Things like our ability to see intention behind everything, our ability to represent the minds of others in our own, our ability to seek patterns even when none are there, and much more are all "receptors" which can leave us prone to a lot of religious thinking.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Similarly our minds and society have evolved in ways that have left us prone to memetic infection from some really unsubstantiated ideas. Things like our ability to see intention behind everything, our ability to represent the minds of others in our own, our ability to seek patterns even when none are there, and much more are all "receptors" which can leave us prone to a lot of religious thinking.

Another view on that would be to repeat the idea that no-one has the capacity to know whatever 'reality' is. It's not as if there's some authoritative account of reality exists, such that we just need to read it and know.

But we need to act, and to do that we need to behave as if we know what we're doing. That requires us to adopt some model, without knowing if it actually has any validity at all.

In that, adopting a religious mindset (or, probably more correctly, inheriting a religious mindset)is no different to adopting any other mindset. There just rules of thumb to guide action that are either successful or unsuccessful. It doesn't much matter if its creation myth is valid, unless you're planning on making a Universe yourself.